He looked very much like a withered old black man who was waiting to die. He couldn't have been active for years. He was stirring, gripping both sides of the mattress with his skinny hands and sitting himself up in a series of jerks, tiny timid movements that showed how fragile he felt. His face and bald head were covered with wrinkles,. like fingertips that had been soaking for hours. Isaac stepped forward to question him.
The son followed, and there no longer seemed to be room in the hut for light. The old man groped for the flashlight and switched it on, but its glow was so feeble that it merely oudined a few glimpses: the old man's broken yellow nails, his fleshless arm, his glistening toothless gums, his dimming eyes. If he meant to direct the glow at his visitors, he was too weak; the flashlight rolled out of his hand, onto the blanket. Alan wished he had let Isaac come here by himself: their only purpose in coming was to find out the name the old man had given Marlowe, which Isaac had forgotten. But he mustn't allow himself to feel qualms at this early stage, for there would be worse than the old man to be faced. All the same, nothing could have induced Alan to give the handshake to the old man; nothing could have made him touch him.
Isaac was speaking. The old man's son stood close to him, a warder at visiting time. The old eyes glimmered at Isaac, the dry lips gaped and closed and gaped. Alan could hear flies buzzing in the hut; they were either large or numerous, or both. He felt lost and helpless; he couldn't understand a word Isaac was saying.
He mustn't feel like that. Isaac was helping him, he could trust Isaac; Isaac knew what he was doing. All the same, standing there uselessly gave Alan far too much time to think, to realize how far he was from Liz and Anna, how long it had been since he'd spoken to them, let alone seen them. His eyes were growing used to the dimness; he could see the flies, or some of them. They were crawling on the old man, whose son made no move to brush them off.
Isaac was asking a question; that much was clear from the tone of his voice. That must mean he was nearly finished – there was only one question he needed to ask. But the old man gazed emptily at him and pressed his lips together. Perhaps he felt that having answered once was enough. The buzzing of flies seemed so loud that Alan felt as if they were crawling inside his skull.
Isaac stooped to the old man and repeated his question. He looked ready to pick up the old man and shake him. The son stepped forward, and Alan wondered if he was going to drag Isaac away from his father. Certainly violence was in the air. The toothless mouth was opening, down there in the dark. Perhaps the old man would answer after all.
Then Alan shuddered and turned away. Isaac or the son must have jarred the bed, for the flashlight moved and flared. The light glistened on a large fly swelling like a boil on the old man's cheek. But that wasn't why Alan stumbled out of the hut. As the flashlight beam lit up the old man's eyes, they had been gazing straight at him.
He stood in the downpour, mud hissing all around him, as if it were full of snakes. Rain flooded down corrugated walls, clattered on roofs. Isaac emerged from the hut almost at once, and Alan hurried toward the marshy street. As he glanced back at the hut, he saw the son ramming the bolt into its socket with immense force, as if to make sure the door would never open again. Alan turned his face up to the rain. After the suffocating hut, even the downpour seemed refreshing.
'We must go to Port Harcourt,' Isaac said. 'I know where now.' Of course, he'd only needed reminding. He sounded triumphant, Alan wished he could share his optimism, but he was still seeing the eyes of the old man in the hut and remembering what lay ahead. As the old man had gazed at him, Alan had glimpsed in those eyes something hungry and inhuman, something that was far older and more dangerous than the old man himself. They had looked very much like the spidery eyes in his dream.
Twenty-two
Port Harcourt was a ghost town surrounded by flames. There wasn't a soul in the streets down by the docks. Alan felt as if he were walking through residential streets that had become deserted overnight, an urban Marie Celeste. Those windows that weren't bricked up gleamed darkly, lifelessly. Long straight streets, glossy with rain, led into the town, where presumably there was life, but nothing moved on them except the flames of the oil refineries beyond the town. Giant cranes laboured up and down the nearby wharf, carrying crates and sacks and steel drums from the dazzling, floodlit ships, but they were the only sign of activity in the maze of docks and warehouses.
The houses had used to be lived in before the trading companies took them over, that was all. He was exhausted and shaken up by the journey – three hundred miles or so from Lagos, and forty miles inland. His whole body felt parched, thirsty even for the tropical rain, his eyes prickly and hot. No wonder he felt on edge – except that he knew that these weren't the reasons at all.
Isaac had brought a flashlight and a map, neither of which seemed much help in the shadowy streets. As he peered at the map, the flames of the refineries sent huge vague shadows of the warehouses staggering toward the two men. 'Don't worry,' Isaac said, his voice low as if he, too, was affected by the strangeness of the place, 'we'll find it.'
Alan was hardly reassured. They'd have more to worry about when they did find it. So far he'd let Isaac lead, but sooner or later he wouldn't be able to hide behind him any longer. Isaac was invaluable because he could speak all the languages and for many other reasons, yet by helping, he was putting off the moment when Alan would have to act for himself. The eyes of the old man in the hut had told Alan that his nightmare of the jungle glade was real, and waiting for him.
Isaac sensed his mood, but mistook its cause. 'We'll find out what we want to know,' he said. 'We mustn't take no for an answer, that's all.'
'I can't see what we can da if he refuses to help. It's not as if he was ever a Leopard Man.'
'His father was.'
'That's no reason why he should know anything, though, is it?'
'I think he does. I'm convinced that David learned something from him.'
A shadow as tall as the warehouses crept over a building, and it took Alan a moment before he was sure it was the shadow of a crane. 'But you said he sounded scared when you told him we were coming.'
'Then we should be able to scare him into talking.'
It seemed grotesque to Alan – himself and a University man, stalking along the rain-blackened crime-movie street like cops or private eyes. Cranes lumbered about the wharf, darkened buildings dripped loudly and shrilly. He wondered if Isaac was as apprehensive as he was. Or didn't Isaac suspect what lay ahead? 'But it isn't us he's scared of,' Alan said.
'True,' Isaac admitted. 'He's scared of the Leopard Men, of what they might do to him if he talks. I think he has nothing to fear – but it may be in our interest to behave as if he has. If there are any Leopard Men left in a place like this, I think they'll be anxious to disown their past, for fear of the police.'
Alan wished he could feel as confident. Hadn't Isaac seen the eyes of the old man in the hut? If the power of the Leopard Men could still possess someone as senile as that, how could any others deny what they were? Warehouses loomed over him, shadows roamed the lifeless streets. Suddenly Isaac halted. 'This is it, I think.'
He was pointing at yet another tall house. The upper windows were glazed and blank, but the windows on either side of the front door were bricked up. The name of a tyre manufacturer clung to the wall above the door; some of the letters were losing their grip, leaning on one another. When Isaac knocked on the door, Alan thought he saw one of them shake.
After a while Isaac knocked again. The house must be full of rubber, and Alan could hear how the knocks were swallowed up at once. He heard several huge mechanical gasps on the wharf, and the rattle of an enormous chain. Isaac knocked once more, long and hard, then he gazed at Alan in the silence. 'Perhaps there may be a side door,' he said.
There was. When they found the way to it through the remains of a garden suffocated by grit and dust, they discovered that it was open. Presumably, since Isaac had written to prepare him fo
r their visit, the night-watchman had left the door ajar for them. As Isaac pushed open the door and raised his flashlight, an overpowering smell of rubber greeted them.
Following the beam of light through the doorway, Alan could see nothing but tyres: tyres lined up on the racks or piled on the floor, rank upon rank of them, extending in every direction until they merged with the darkness. Narrow aisles led between them. The stench of rubber was so thick that it seemed to darken the air, as if the rubber was soaking up the light. It also seemed to prevent sound from travelling far, so that as Isaac advanced, calling 'Mr Ogunbe', it sounded as if he were calling into fog.
Alan hoped they'd find him soon. Now that he was inside, the warehouse didn't seem at all like a house; he suspected there were no longer any rooms. The rubber aisles closed in on him, and he was afraid of upsetting the piles of tyres, bringing them crashing down on him. Much like a ghost train, the interior of the building seemed considerably larger than the exterior. The narrow aisles might go on for ever; the dark made it impossible to see where they ended.
Suddenly Isaac halted. A light was flickering in the distance, illuminating an intersection of aisles. In the shaky glow, the segmented piles of tyres looked as if they were stirring, like grey worms rearing up. 'That must be our man,' Isaac said, and hurried forward. 'Mr Ogunbe!'
If it was, then it seemed he'd changed his mind about helping. The light darted to the left, and they glimpsed a man with a flashlight crossing their aisle; then he disappeared and the intersection was dark again. Isaac strode toward the point where they'd glimpsed him. Alan hurried in pursuit, more afraid than ever of bringing down the rubber walls; he could smell how it would feel to suffocate under them. The jerky light kept making them seem to wobble, an unnerving joke. Had the man at the intersection been white? Surely Ogunbe wasn't a white man's name? Really, whoever it was had crossed too quickly for Alan to see.
When they reached the intersection, there was no sign of the other man's light. Isaac shone his beam along the left-hand aisle, where hundreds of grey segments squirmed with shadows. There were several intersections, and no way of knowing which route the man had taken. Isaac put his finger to his lip for quiet. He looked determined but bewildered.
In a moment they heard two things. Far off in the dark – perhaps it would have seemed closer in the daytime – a door closed. Alan recognized the sound from having heard it a few minutes ago. It was the side door. Had the watchman left the building? No, for to their right, where the man with the flashlight had come from, they heard someone moaning.
Isaac swung his light that way. Tyres came swelling out of the dark, looking fattened. It was an aisle of larger tyres, that was all. Isaac went forward, taking the light away as he searched for the source of the moaning. Why did it sound so muffled? Alan kept pace with him, so as not to be left behind by the light. He wasn't sure by any means that he wanted to find whoever or whatever was giving out those agonized moans.
They had reached the second intersection when he saw light down the left-hand aisle. In a moment he made out an office door. Of course, it was the night-watchman's office; the maze had brought them to the front of the building. 'Mr Ogunbe,' Isaac called^ and started toward the lit door.
He stopped almost at once. Someone was crashing about in the office. They heard a chair fall, and a tin mug; then the light beyond the frosted glass began to sway as someone's hand collided with the shade. They saw the hand, a huge blotch that loomed on the frosted glass of the door. In a moment they saw the silhouette of a man as he stumbled against the door. His face was a dark blur pressed against the glass, which vibrated with his desperate moaning.
Suddenly he fumbled the door open. Had his face left dark stains on the glass? Before Isaac could turn the light full on him, he reeled forward into a pile of tyres. They toppled, blocking the aisle, rolling and swerving. Some rolled toward Isaac, who retreated, bumping into Alan, shoving him against a rack of tyres. For a moment he thought the whole place was about to fall on them.
Isaac had dropped the flashlight. It rolled in a circle, its beam stuttering over tyres, slowing. In the light from the doorway they saw that the man from the office had fallen. He was crawling toward them over the tyres, still moaning. Isaac retrieved the flashlight and shone the beam into the man's face.
At first Alan thought he was wearing a mask and that perhaps that was why his moaning was so muffled. Looking at his face, he found that he was thinking – so incongruously it was horrible even before he understood why – of a rag doll with stitches for mouth and eyes. Then the man crawled, closer to the light, and Alan stumbled backward, retching. The mask was the man's face. He would tell them nothing, even if he could see them. Someone had sewn up his eyes and his mouth.
Twenty-three
Anna was sitting at a table in the room behind the counter at The Stone Shop. She was making a bird, trying to glue the halves of a shell onto the back of a stone for wings. The wings kept falling off, or sticking lopsidedly, and her fingers were sticky and peeling; they unglued themselves every time she moved them. There wasn't much room on the table for her to work, what with Rebecca's half-finished stone creatures, Rebecca's handbag spilling its load of handkerchiefs and lipsticks and make-up, and the 'doctor and nurse' love story that Rebecca was reading, which was folded in half, its pages glued together like a book daddy had once shown her that he'd had to cut open with a knife. She was fed up with gluing, she wanted to paint her bird – that was the part she enjoyed most. She looked longingly at the pots and brushes on the shelf, but it was no good, she had to make the bird first. She mustn't give up. She longed to feel she was some use to someone.
She had managed to line up the shell wings at last and was waiting for the glue to dry when someone at the counter said, 'Isn't that sweet.' An old lady had picked up Anna's caterpillar, several pebbles with a grin painted on the front one. Anna had stuck them on a large stone, which she'd painted green for grass. 'By Anna, aged 6', the cardboard notice said. While Anna watched, the old lady called Rebecca over and bought the caterpillar. 'That little girl in there made it, did she? What a clever child,' the old lady said. 'She'll go far.'
Anna smiled at her, then turned away. She felt like crying. Selling her work didn't matter any more, and nothing else seemed to. All she wanted was to know what she'd done to make daddy hate her so much.
He'd gone away without even saying goodbye to her. That showed how much he hated her, even more than what happened the night mummy had gone to the party. She didn't want to think about that, she wasn't even sure by now what had really happened, but she couldn't forget waking up the next morning to find he'd gone away. He always said goodbye to her, and 'Look after eachother' -and he always gave her a kiss to keep safe for him until he came back. This time he hadn't even spoken to her. That showed how much he blamed her for what had happened.
She went to the shelves for brushes and pots, to give herself something to do: yellow for the bird's body, blue for the wings. She carried them back to the table and sat there, trying to want to paint. But all she could think of was daddy. She was nearly sure that he'd gone away because of her. She had stopped him writing, whatever mummy said. There was only one other thing she could think of that he could blame her for, that would have worried him so much: she'd let the metal claw be stolen, the claw he'd brought home from Africa.
She ought to have seen who'd taken it. She would have done if she'd been in her playroom opposite the long room when the claw had been stolen – only she'd left her playroom because the man had been looking in the window. She was sure the man had been there – baby Georgie had seen him and started crying. She had almost seen him dodging out of sight, even if mummy didn't believe in him. But at the same time, she knew he was no excuse. If she hadn't left her playroom she would have seen who had come into the house.
She tried to remember hearing someone sneak in – she had been trying ever since that afternoon – but try as she might, she couldn't remember anything of the kind. She'
d been sitting near the kitchen door. She was almost certain that no stranger had come into the house, but what would that mean? She felt she was trying to excuse herself. She'd let the claw be stolen, daddy had been looking after it for someone, it was far worse if you lost something that belonged to someone else. It was nearly enough of a reason for daddy to hate her, but knowing that still didn't help. Even supposing the claw could be found, she couldn't bear the idea that it might come back.
She didn't know why, she didn't want to think. She was glad it had been stolen; that was why she felt so guilty. She opened the yellow paint and dipped in a brush, to stop herself thinking. The glue should be dry by now. The claw mustn't come back, the idea terrified her, made her feel as if the stuffy room that smelled of glue and paints had turned into a freezer. It was worth being hated by daddy if it meant the claw had gone for good. The bargain shocked and dismayed her. She pulled the bird of shells toward her, and the wings came off again.
She was sitting miserably, feeling as if she'd pulled the wings off a butterfly by mistake, when Rebecca came in. 'That's a nice surprise, isn't it?' she said, which seemed a cruel joke, until Anna realized that she was talking about selling the caterpillar to the old lady. 'Since it's your first sale, I won't take a percentage.'
When Anna didn't smile, Rebecca came to see what was wrong. 'Never mind,' she said, spotting the broken bird. 'Shall I mend it for you? It won't take a minute.'
Anna nodded, but she didn't care, and that must have shown in her face. Rebecca sat down by her. 'What's the matter, love?'
Anna couldn't tell her. There seemed to be so many things she couldn't talk about now. She hadn't been able to tell mummy what had happened that night on the beach – even thinking about it made her feel somehow ashamed. But mummy had asked her only once, she seemed not to want to know. 'Is everything all right at home?' Rebecca said.
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